I've designed with Xilinx FPGAs. However, the new line of FPGAs have much more complexity. This is a excellent course on pointing out there architectures and their technologies. Thank you for broadcasting this course.

HI Max, Thanks for a great lecture. I had to listen to the archive due to a tech issue but it let me rewind on a few points you made. I have a historical background in uC and DSP and am now looking to learn FPGA to increase my skill set. Looking forward to the rest of your lectures.

I heard that FPGA are used in the airplanes for saving the critical parameters. aren't these devices susceptible to change in temp and do they operate in the same speed and accuracy even in high altitudes?

There are some differences, not the least that the programmable fabric is different -- and the DSP slices -- and stuff like that -- I'm not saying one is bbetter than the other -- just that there are differences. Also the Zynq has some programmable analog and 17 analog input pins and stuff

The audio shows up in a player widget once archived, but a link to the actual .MP3 file to allow a simple download and save would be nice. Otherwise they play live but don't let me save them to disk or MP3 player for offline usage.

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@bill: The audio is up now -- right under the headline their's a little audio button/ribbon thing -- click on that and you should hear my dulcet tones (make sue you've downloaded the slides so you can follow along)

@matriley: Thsi is a great question -- it's one a lot of people ask -- wrappling your brain around this is really important when it comes to understanding the other stuff we will be looking at later this week

Seriously Max, the Papilio has only 500 "Kgates". Enough room for a Microblaze I think (I use Altera, so I don't know precisely), but not for complex stuff of the kind that people who wants a Cortex-A9 plus HW accelerators like.

I was really getting interested in crowd-funding a Zynq board (just for the rest of us who cannot afford a ZedBoard!), similar to the Parallella case. Anyone likes the idea?

Thansk to everyone for joining in today -- I really hope you enjoyed it -- there's a lot of confusion in this area and I think that it's really useful to build up things slowely -- I'm very much looking forward to tomorrow

Re the question: "And what are all the applications available for a SOC(FPGA along with ARM core)"

I woudl say "limited only by your imagination" -- the ARM core can be used for decision making tasks, the programmable fabric can be used for massively parallel data-processing. There's a lot of interest t ouse these in machine vision applications like automotive savety systems. I knw oone gut who is implementing an artificial neural network ... and what about indudstrial control systems...

I wasn't aware of the fuse types, so I did learn new stuff. Except it's knowledge that you simply "take in". That can't be said once you get to actually programming and have problems with Vhdl/Verilog. So I am eagerly awaiting the next lectures and will read up on your articles. I am trying to make a dvi video capturing system and I am at the stage of learning PSRAM and serial/network communication.

Zynq is an interesting device, but unfortunately is quite costly for the entry-level reprogrammable market (in my opinion). Even the "cheap" ZedBoard is in the range of $300-400 (academic/regular price). If Xilinx supposedly wants to enforce a new reprogrammable paradigm, then why just the focus on the high end of the market? (same goes to Altera).

Onlt the ARM Cortex-M1 core was designed to be immplemented efficiently using the FPGA programmable fabric -- that is, as a soft core. The thing about the Zynq is that the ARM Cortex-A9 is implemented as a hard core which makes it much more efficiemnt (lower power, greater performance) than a soft core...

@Daniel: re your comment "i consider that the toggle rate of sram is the most problem wich consumes more power" -- the thing about the SRAM-based configuration cells is that they are only toggled/loaded when the board is powered up and the device is loaded/configured -- after that they just sit there configuring the device...

I don;t think it's true to say that "FPGAs are mainly used for prototyping ASICs" -- I think it's true to say that a large proportion of ASIC designs are prototyped using FPGAs, but if you look at the vast numbers of FPGAs sold they are in applications like communications, backplane, infrastructure, automotvre, industrial control...

Hi H S Sriharsha -- Xilinx licebnced the use of the ARM Cortex-A9 sual-core micrcontroller subststem and then implemented it on their Zynq device along with a bunch of regulat FRGA fabric (and other stuff)

Re which consumes more power -- SRAM or FLASH -- that's an interesting one. If you take two devuces created at the same process node -- say 65nm, then the SRAM will consume more power. But the FLASH devices are typically 1 to 2 process nodes behind. So most Flash devuces today are at 65nm or higher, whil estate-of-the-art SRAM devuces are at 28nm. In this case, for the same number of gates, the SRAM will consume less power I think.

Another housekeeping note, folks: The streaming audio player will appear on this web page when the show starts at 9:00 am PST/12:00 pm EST today. Note however that some companies block live audio streams. If when the show starts you don't hear any audio, try refreshing your browser, and hitting the play button.